An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has been talked about its future plans at GameFest in Seattle, and revealed that its Xbox 360 Live Vision camera will ship next month with a free game, TotemBall, which uses gestural technology to control an on-screen avatar, much like Sony's EyeToy games. In addition, the camera will also be used for facemapping technology in Activision's World Series Of Poker game." Gamespot is reporting on other, equally interesting peripherals for the Xbox 360, many of which have come up in recent rumormongering. They discuss the price point for the HD-DVD drive (probably about $200), support for 1080p (likely), a new media jukebox for the console (quite possible), and the likelihood that Microsoft will release a new controller designed specifically for FPSes (would make sense).

muff1253 writes to tell us VMware yesterday announced the winners of the Ultimate Virtual Appliance Challenge (UVAC). The contest, which started at the end of February, was designed to test teams on their ability to create a "pre-built, pre-configured, and ready-to-run" application that could be packaged with operating systems in virtual machines.

cpugeniusmv writes to tell us News.com is reporting that RealNetworks plans to release an open source method to allow Linux users to play Windows Media files. Currently Linux users are able to play the two main Windows Media formats (wmv and wma) but only if they install closed-source modules. The ability to launch this initiative comes from a recent licensing deal between RealNetworks and Microsoft and the antitrust settlement against Microsoft.

Justin writes "PSP homebrew always seems to get all the attention, but the DS homebrew scene is surprisingly active and robust as well. Modojo has an in-depth feature examining DS homebrew, including such things as PDA applications, indie games, and ScummVM DS (for oldschool LucasArts adventure games). From the article: 'My initial reaction to homebrew was little more than a shrug. I summed up the entire idea very simply with: Why? Why waste time on exploring less than impressive independent titles and old emulators when there is already so much new and interesting content for the DS? Luckily, at that time I couldn't have imagined the amazing world of homebrew I was denying myself.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Tomshardware says Sony's Tiny Mylo Internet Communicator is out. "The first page of MobilityGuru's July 2006 review of Nokia's 770 WiFi powered Internet based communicator was titled "In A Class Of Its Own." One Month later the title is no longer correct. With the recent announcement of its Mylo (for My life online) personal communicator Sony joined the battle for the hearts, minds and pocketbooks of people whose major means of communication is instant messaging and Web based phone calling."" I've got a 770 on my desk right now (review forthcoming) so I'm curious to see other takes on the genre.

Klaidas writes "BBC reports that YouTube is aiming to have every music video ever created within 18 months and offer them free of charge to its users
"Right now we're trying to very quickly determine how and what the model is to distribute this content and we're very aggressive in assisting the labels in trying to get the content on to YouTube," said Mr Chen."

1up reports that Sony has no intention of dropping the PSP's price this holiday season. The idea of a price drop, put forth by CNN's Game Over column, has been flatly denied by the company. 1up writer Susan Arendt thinks they may be just a little bit false here: "I'm going to be the 'glass half-full' person and suggest that by saying the company 'currently' has no plans to cut the price 'at this time,' the Sony rep wasn't just being repetitive and redundant, but rather suffering from a Hamlet-esque condition of protesting too much, indicating that Sony does, in fact have a big fat price drop planned, especially considering their history of holiday price cuts."

Compete writes "We have some interesting analysis on how Social Networking sites compare to portals. From a sample size of around 2 million US people, Compete concludes that social networking sites are quickly approaching the traffic level of the big portals like Google and Yahoo. They liken the growth of SNS to email in the 90's. Their key findings: 1. In June, 2 out of every 3 people online visited a social networking site 2. Since January 2004, the number of people visiting or taking part in one of the top online social networks has grown by over 109% 3. Social networking sites are now close to eclipsing traffic to the giants — Google and Yahoo"

eebra82 writes "Apple just updated their Bootcamp website with the release of Bootcamp 1.1 beta. It adds extended hardware support, including the ability to install XP on any internal disk, built-in iSight camera support, built-in microphone, right clicks with Apple key, more keyboard buttons such as Delete, NumLock, PrintScreen and ScrollLock. Numerous annoyances are no more thanks to motherboard updates, too. This release is 200 MB or so over the previous 90 MB install, which is due to heavier driver support such as included Nvidia video drivers."

ReadWriteWeb writes "Microsoft's Chris Wilson, the Group Program Manager for IE addresses the issue of whether IE7 is CSS and Web standards compliant. Last week a Slashdot post claimed that IE7 was basically non-compliant with CSS standards. But Chris Wilson says that isn't true and that standards improvements is a big part of IE7. He admits that there were a ton of bugs from IE6 that have caused web developers a lot of pain, but says that IE7 will address those and be standards compliant. He goes as far to say that IE7 supports Web standards even at the expense of more backwards compatibility."

pieterh writes "I've launched a campaign to rid the world of the caps lock key. Sure, there are more serious problems to solve but please, think of the children! How am I going to explain to my kids why some of the most valuable keyboard real estate is squatted by a large, useless key that above all you must not press! Our campaign mission is simple: to send a message to the computer industry to force it (by any means necessary) to retire the CAPS key. It's going to be a hard, long, and possibly very embarassing war on uppercase, but some things just need to be done. "

IZ Reloaded writes "Sources tell SPACE.com that the International Astronomical Union is preparing to include three new entries to the current list of planets in our solar system. From the article: The asteroid Ceres, which is round, would be recast as a dwarf planet in the new scheme. Pluto would remain a planet and its moon Charon would be reclassified as a planet. Both would be called "plutons," however, to distinguish them from the eight "classical" planets. A far-out Pluto-sized object known as 2003 UB313 would also be called a pluton."

Registered Coward v2 writes "AOL is planning to dig in a MA couple's yard looking for buried gold and platinum owned by a spammer they successfully sued for spamming AOL. AOL said Tuesday it intends to search for gold and platinum bars the company suspects are hidden near the home of Davis Wolfgang Hawke's parents on two acres in Medfield, Massachusetts. The family said it will fight in court to oppose AOL's plans."

Vicissidude writes "Teachers in sports, music, and other fields tend to believe that talent matters and that they know it when they see it. In fact, they appear to be confusing ability with precocity. There is usually no way to tell, from a recital alone, whether a young violinist's extraordinary performance stems from innate ability or from years of Suzuki-style training. The preponderance of psychological evidence indicates that experts are made, not born. In fact, it takes approximately a decade of heavy labor to master any field. Even child prodigies, such as Gauss in mathematics, Mozart in music, and Bobby Fischer in chess, must have made an equivalent effort, perhaps by starting earlier and working harder than others. It is no coincidence that the incidence of chess prodigies multiplied after László Polgár published a book on chess education. The number of musical prodigies underwent a similar increase after Mozart's father did the equivalent two centuries earlier."

Flamerule writes "A New York Times article has finally provided an update on the status of Grigori Perelman's 2003 rough proof of the Poincaré Conjecture. 3 years ago, Perelman published several papers online explaining his idea for proving the conjecture, but after giving lectures at MIT and several other schools (covered on Slashdot) he returned to Russia, where he's remained silent since. Now, mathematicians in the US and elsewhere have finally finished going over his work and have produced several papers, totaling 1000 pages, that give step-by-step, complete proofs of the conjecture. In addition to winning some or all of the $1,000,000 Millennium Prize, Perelman now seems to be the favorite to receive a Fields Medal at the International Mathematics Union meeting next week, but it's not clear that he'll even show up!"